Ireland's "No" to the Anti-Democratic EU

John O'Sullivan:

Ireland seems to have voted a convincing No — by about 54 to 46 percent — to the proposed Lisbon Treaty that would have moved the EU even closer to being a fully-fledged state with its own foreign minister and "common foreign policy" on top of citizenship, flag, anthem, etc., etc. The Lisbon Treaty is almost identical to the European Constitution that was previously rejected by the French and Dutch electorates in referenda two years ago.

Under the EU rules rejection by a single state is supposed to doom a treaty, let alone a "constitutional treaty." Hey, but what's a constitution between friends? Or even acquaintances? All that happened two years ago was that the Constitution was re-packaged as a Treaty with minor cosmetic changes such as re-naming the EU Foreign Minister a "High Representative." The European Diplomatic Service went ahead despite the absence of any legal basis for it — so did a multitude of other EU institutions such as a defense procurement agency and, come to think of it, an entire Euro-defense structure.

So everyone now expects that Europe will find some way to ignore the voters yet again — Gordon Brown has even telephoned Nicholas Sarkozy to reassure him that the British government will press ahead with its own ratification of the treaty despite the fact that it is now technically dead. How to solve the larger problem? Well, Ireland might be asked to think again; it's standard EU procedure to keep asking the same question until the voters finally give the right answer...

The French and Dutch electorates, having rejected the treaty the first time, were simply not allowed to vote on it a second time. Almost every other country confined its endorsement to parliamentary ratification even though massive constitutional change and a significant loss of sovereignty (both of which usually require a two-thirds majority in democratic organizations) were mandated by Lisbon. And the Eurocrats tried an end run around national political resistance by insisting that although treaty ratification was not legally binding on governments, it was nonetheless "politically binding"—a hitherto unheard-of concept...